The Diamond Ring

I’m about to meet the third member of the triumvirate. My legs give way beneath me and I crumple in the doorway.

The pointed toes stop right in front of me. She is wearing red stockings with a silky sheen. They crease very slightly as she lifts her foot.

‘You like the shoes? Sexy as hell, aren’t they? A little fetish, no? Gustav gave me these, when we got engaged.’

One pointed toe hooks itself under my chin.

‘Stand up straight.’ The voice segues from a croon to a snarl. ‘Slouching there like a slut.’

My face is levered upwards, leading my eyes up the long, skinny legs, past the red stocking tops and under a black trench coat where I catch a glimpse of a bare, waxed snatch glowing white in the shadows.

Margot Levi stamps her foot back on the floor. She puts her hands on her hips in an aggressive, questioning gesture as she swivels to face Gustav who is now standing in the corridor behind her.

He takes an unsteady step nearer. ‘Don’t you dare speak to Serena like that!’

She throws her head back and laughs. It’s a deep, rattling sound which seems to suck the breath out of her.

‘Still so angry and masterful, Levi. You used to leap to my defence in just that way!’ Margot points at me. ‘She too pathetic to stand up for herself? No, don’t answer that. I can see she’s just out of nappies! God, you two have goaded me for long enough.’

She is wearing a black beret just like mine. She pulls it off and tosses it with perfect aim on to a coat hook. Her black hair is plaited into cornrows, which she quickly coils into a bundle at the back of her head. A collection of dreadlocks falls over and conceals one side of her face, but the slanted black eyes glitter through the screen of hair. The cheekbones are still razor sharp and painted with the same theatrical matt white foundation she wore the first time I set eyes on her.

Margot has been creeping round the edges of our lives for weeks. Pierre made out I was going mad, but I’m certain now that she was dancing with him at the burlesque theatre the day I did the commission.

She tips her head sideways, the better to study me, and slowly starts to unbutton her coat.

Why on earth did I think I could avoid Margot for ever? I’ve seen her face repeated a hundred times over in the sketches that lined the walls in Lugano. I’ve seen her in a video she uploaded when I stupidly left my iPad at the theatre after that same shoot. She filmed herself holding a wedding bouquet of edelweiss, those almond-shaped eyes blinking flirtatiously.

This is for you, Gustav darling. Remember these pretty bridal flowers? Remember this wedding music? Remember me?

And it was her I saw at the Weinmeyers’ Venetian ball, dressed all in white with a gold mask, watching me. Watching Pierre as he pranced about in green velvet and peacock feathers and came to claim me.

‘No greeting for the love of your life, Gusty?’ she demands, pulling the black trench coat off her shoulders. She’s not topless underneath, thank God, but wearing a scarlet, sheer, see-through blouse and a red leather skirt.

‘You wouldn’t know true love if it took you up the arse!’ Gustav growls in a voice I don’t recognise, slamming her against the wall as he pushes past her. ‘I’d hoped I’d never breathe the same air as you again.’

He pulls me against his chest. I can hear his heart drumming crazily. Despite those ugly words, I realise he’s not just trying to protect me. I’m a shield protecting him.

‘Ah, my love, you have no idea. You see, we’ve been sharing the same air for months now. I know for instance that you have a silly flag hanging from that telescope on top of your apartment building. I know you kiss goodbye at the corner of the Dakota building every morning when you go your separate ways to work. Touching.’ Margot lets out a harsh sigh. ‘And when I’m not watching, I’m eavesdropping. Because my minion planted a bug in your apartment on New Year’s Eve, oh, and another in your gallery when the builders were in there. You’re going to be late for that reservation at La Lanterna, by the way!’

‘Go back to your desert island, Margot. Get out before I do something we both regret.’

His words hiss out, half-smothered in my hair.

‘Oh, Gustav. What’s happened to you? You never used to scare so easily.’ She laughs quietly behind us. ‘I’m not here to harm you. Why would I? I adore you! We were bound to come together again eventually. And you know how beautiful it is when we come together.’

The floorboards creak. The front door slams shut. Gustav groans and holds me so tight I can’t breathe.

And then Margot must have moved into another room, because music starts to play. Edith Piaf warbles in an old, scratchy recording from what must be the sitting room. Heavy curtains rattle shut across the window, the metal rings jostling and clattering. The French sparrow declares, quietly at first, then louder as the dial cranks up the volume, that she regrets nothing.

‘As for ordering me out? Impossible, I’m afraid, since this is my property, acquired from you in that very generous divorce settlement.’ There’s the pop of a cork being drawn from a bottle and the heavy chink of crystal glasses. ‘Oh, by the way, Gusty, did you like the peacock feather? My little visual joke? I went to all the trouble of posting it myself, even though your little tart was, ah, distracting you at the time.’

Gustav lets go of me and marches stiffly into the next room. ‘And?’

‘And it worked! You’re here, aren’t you? My pet, come to heel. And it’s not just any feather, my love. It’s the feather in your little brother’s cap.’

I hurry after him, dreading what she’s going to say next. ‘So if Pierre didn’t send it, how did you get hold of it?’

Margot has arranged herself like a queen on an oversized armchair upholstered in purple brocade. She is brushing the feather against her face. She turns briefly in my direction, glancing at my breasts, then turns back to Gustav.

‘I came here straight from Venice. There was no sign of Pierre or any of his things, but I found this feather. Lovingly arranged in that vase.’

We all look at a delicate flute on the mantelpiece, twisting and turning in waves like a whirlpool. It’s hideously ugly, veined with rainbow colours, but I recognise it as Murano glass.

‘So where is he?’ Gustav has reached her side of the room and stands over the big chair, the gas flames licking greedily at his legs.

‘My little puppet?’ Margot waggles her fingers like a clown. ‘I couldn’t care less.’

Everything about her, the white face, the red slash of lipstick, the cruel amusement, the ironic musical backing track, is reminiscent of The Joker. Neither Gustav nor I can speak.

‘He’s served his purpose. Six years ago he helped me humiliate you, Gustav, and now he’s helped me again.’ Margot’s eyes slither in my direction but fix on the golden locket, not my face. ‘All it took was a call from me supposedly out of the blue last autumn, when I heard this ginger-haired tramp was worming her way into your life and into your wallet. He was shocked and pretty hostile at first. We’d both abandoned him, after all. But once I applied the soft pedal and promised that I was a changed woman, that it wasn’t him I wanted, that I was simply heartbroken after six years without you, Gusty, he was ready to listen. He told me he was leading a normal life, chasing normal women, but that’s pure bravado. It was only a matter of time before he was crawling between my legs for an encore. Anyway, the breakthrough was when I told him I knew where to find you. He admitted he missed you desperately but hadn’t the bottle to start searching, and that was my cue. I convinced him that this little tart was in the way and he would never get close to you without my help.’

Every word sounds as if she’s spitting pips.

‘How did this work?’ demands Gustav. ‘The mechanics of it, I mean?’

I stare at him. ‘Don’t give her the oxygen, Gustav!’

She cuts through me. ‘Night and day I’ve been texting Pierre. The bird on his shoulder. The voice in his ear. I had to keep reminding him whose idea it was to broker this reconciliation; I had to keep him on your tail. I was his prompt, suggesting what to do and say. Right through Christmas. Even on New Year’s Eve, when he was in your apartment. Those initial bitter exchanges between the two of you came mostly from him, I might add. His way of saving face, I suppose. He was desperate to get close to you again, but making amends doesn’t come easily to him. He had to air his own myriad grievances before you could be brothers again. I’d forgotten how petulant he could be. All I wanted was for him to get rid of her, but oh dear. Look. She’s still here. The bare-legged waif and stray.’

She stops. There’s a pause between music tracks, no sound except the hiss of the gas fire. I want Gustav to look at me, but his eyes are fixed on Margot.

She points the feather at me, but her eyes are on him.

‘Six years is long enough without you, Gusty. The idea was for Pierre to get back in touch with you, pave the way, deal with this thorn in the flesh, and then I would step in. He could be part of our future or not, whatever he chose.’

‘So you and Pierre are not together?’

‘We never really were. Not six years ago. Not now. You’re the only one for me, Gustav. Oh, I promised him some sexy fun when I contacted him again, so long as he played ball the way I wanted it, but that only worked the first couple of times. Enough to reel him in, but he was faltering almost from the start. He wasn’t even grateful that I’d helped him find you. It proved quite traumatic seeing you again and he went on the offensive. That aggression, those fights! He could have blown the reconciliation completely. Then it came together too quickly, and this redhead runt – she’s different from the others. He wanted her. I told him he had to keep his prick in his pants, at least until I’d got you safely back, Gusty, so Pierre came up with the rather brilliant idea, at least in theory, of wheeling his randy friend Tomas into the mix to deflect any mischief away from himself.’

She pauses, separating the strands of the feather with a long fingernail while the words sink in.

‘Tomas?’ repeats Gustav, making the connection just as I fear he will. ‘I know that name. Serena? Who is he?’

‘No one important.’ I feel myself blushing scarlet but there’s no way out of this one. ‘Tomas is the guy who – he’s the guy you saw at the Club Crème. Who participated in that stupid striptease I did after I’d photographed the stags’ night. Then he went and told Pierre all about it.’

Tomas, who had come on to me back at Pierre’s Halloween party. Whom I rejected. And now I know why Pierre and Polly kept going on about him at New Year, suggesting he join us in a foursome when Gustav’s flight home from Lugano was delayed.

I swallow and glance up. Gustav doesn’t seem to be listening. He is watching Margot as if she’s a praying mantis.

‘That’s the one. Cute. Blonde curls. He carried out his first task at the Club Crème willingly enough. It could have worked, except Pierre was too jealous and told Tomas he wasn’t needed any more.’ Margot sighs. ‘Your brother was no good. He kept stalling. He became agitated around this little tramp, so I had to keep him sweet in my own inimitable way. I’ve still got it, Gusty. I was thinking of you the whole time he was in my bed. You remember my bondage trick with the blindfold and the horsewhip? But even while I was pleasuring him, he was harping on and on about how he liked your little tart. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He felt bad about what he was doing. You and she were the real deal, he said!’

‘And so we are,’ says Gustav in a very low voice. ‘Pierre’s absolutely right.’

‘Touching. Nauseatingly so,’ Margot mocks. ‘But where the brotherly love thing gets so biblical and amusing is that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He liked your little redhead way too much. So you see, however close you boys become, a woman will always drive a wedge. Women are Pierre Levi’s drug. His downfall. The more verboten she is the better. A lesson learned at my knee, of course. That’s why on New Year’s Eve he came rushing over here from your happy little reunion at the apartment, telling me he wasn’t happy with the plan, or indeed with me for dreaming it up, but then within ten minutes he was tied to the bed next door with his bottom in the air. He just can’t say no.’

‘Even so. He knew where his loyalties lay. Your plan didn’t work, Margot. Nothing will work.’ Gustav snorts. ‘You can stir that cauldron all you like. But it’s a total waste of time.’

‘I was beginning to think I would have to bring down the house of cards myself, certainly. And then what do you know? Paranoid Polly comes up with those photographs!’ Margot claps her hands gleefully, making me jump. ‘Hilarious! You all started falling out. I couldn’t have planned it better myself! I was poised to strike, and then he—’

‘You’re boring me now. I don’t want to hear about your warped thinking. Pierre isn’t answering his phone.’ Gustav clenches his fists. ‘What have you done with him?’

‘Look at me, Gusty. Look. At. Me.’ Margot licks her finger and runs it over her painted eyebrow. ‘He’s a grown man who regularly works out. You really think a petite creature like me could hurt him?’

‘Absolutely I do.’ Gustav takes a step nearer, then pulls back as if she might burn him. But now he’s too close to the fire. ‘You are capable of murder.’

Margot falls back in her chair theatrically, fanning herself with the feather. She even glances across at me, finally catching my eye with an exaggerated expression of conspiracy, as if to say, did he really just accuse me of something so dreadful?

‘Amazing that you boys both emerged from the same womb. Pierre Levi isn’t worth the effort. I’ve dispensed with him, but that doesn’t mean I’ve killed him!’ She rests her finger thoughtfully on her chin as her eyes fix on my golden locket. ‘The last time we were face to face he was alive and well and extremely rude. You were there, too. I surprised him at his scruffy little backstreet theatre, but under cover of the music and lights he told me yet again that he couldn’t do it. He told me the deal really was off this time. He wasn’t involving Tomas or anyone else. Finito. He said he’d fallen for his brother’s girlfriend. And then he went off on a date with her.’

‘Not a date. He and Serena had a business meeting, which ended with an over-affectionate farewell. His own admission.’ Gustav allows himself a grim smile as he folds his arms. ‘I must say I never thought Pierre would have the balls to tell you to take a hike!’

‘That boy doesn’t have balls, Gustav. Not like you. He’s weak, and he’s bitter. That delicious spunk of his has all dribbled away. You know how I like my lovers. Obsessed. Besotted. Enslaved. Not half-cocked or lusting after someone else. I mean, how insulting is that!’ She snaps her eyes back to Gustav. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. He’s gone. OK? My information is that he’s slunk off to LA.’

‘Now he can leave us in peace!’

It’s out before I can stop it. I clasp the back of the velvet sofa blocking my way into the over-furnished room. Gustav’s black eyebrows draw together as if he’s forgotten I’m there. He turns at last to stare at me.

‘Bravo! Spoken like a woman with a very guilty conscience!’ Margot’s catlike eyes and mouth tilt up in a triumphant smile which seems to stretch her skin until it looks too tight.

And there’s something different about her face. I’ve committed that face to memory, God knows, with and without such heavy make-up, but even allowing for the passage of time, something structural has changed.

‘He hasn’t slunk anywhere. He’s in LA for work.’ Gustav clears his throat, but he still sounds as if he’s chewing on pebbles. ‘He hasn’t sent the feather. He’s done nothing wrong. So he’s probably just delighted to have escaped from you.’

‘He’s done plenty wrong, Gusty.’ Still smiling, Margot starts to count off on her fingers. ‘Ask your precious jailbait.’

I stare at those bony older-woman’s fingers. The same fingers I saw at the burlesque theatre when I was filming the finale. Margot was reaching out of the wings to grab Pierre. I remember now that he didn’t looked pleased or even surprised to see her. Just hypnotised as they sketched a tango before the lights snapped out again.

But if he was terminating their arrangement as they danced, then something he said to me later that evening doesn’t ring true.

If Margot was here, I’d take her right now in front of you. I mean it. And she’d go with it. She doesn’t care where, when, who, what.

Margot’s voice punctures my thoughts. ‘The idea was to isolate your little plaything by drip-feeding terrible things about your past, dangle juicy young Tomas in front of her, whatever, all the while staying squeaky clean himself, but instead Pierre ripped up the agenda.’

‘Agenda? You make it sound like a committee planning world domination.’

‘There’s no other way of achieving your goal. You know that. But a plan is only as good as its execution and its fulfilment. Pierre lost his head. No amount of brotherly love was going to stop him from having a crack at this girl once the opportunity arose. And voilà! The two of you unexpectedly part, she storms off to Venice, he loses all loyalty except to his loins, and he goes in for the kill. All his own idea. And to be fair, even though I had no active part in it, his scheming in Venice nearly succeeded in toppling Saint Serena off her perch after all. Except the spineless little shit didn’t follow through.’ She stops, clamps her bright-red lips shut and closes her eyes as if in pain. ‘If you need a job doing well, just finish it off yourself. Which is why I am here.’

Gustav walks over to the fireplace and runs his finger along the mantelpiece, empty save for the horrible little vase and a trio of oversized black glass candlesticks. His hand is shaking. His black hair falls over his face as he stares into the fake flames for a moment.

‘Just so I don’t have to stay in this room a moment longer than necessary, let’s get this clear. You are saying this rapprochement with Pierre started off as a ruse? He came to find me in London, pretended to end our estrangement, purely on your instructions?’

Margot’s eyes snap open. Even her false eyelashes seem to radiate gleeful evil.

‘He’s changed a lot in the last six years, Gustav. A consummate performer! All that time he spends hanging round in theatres has paid off, fondling those petticoats, trying on those masks, watching how others make a profession out of lying.’

‘Not to me. He hasn’t been lying to me.’

‘Especially to you! If he was in this room with us now he’d be lying to save his sorry scorched skin.’ Margot lifts her chin in the air and presses her hand to her breast to imitate a pretentious actor. ‘He’s weak, like all of you. He couldn’t keep it up in the end. Either the act, or his cock.’

Gustav stares up at the ceiling, his mouth drawn tight. I follow his gaze. The ceiling has the same ornate cornicing as the lobby downstairs, but there is a large, urine-coloured stain running across it.

‘I don’t buy it. My trust in him has been right. You may have cooked up this situation, and I suppose I should thank you for that, but you’ve lost your touch. In fact, all of this has backfired. I knew it was genuine, however shaky it felt initially. Pierre and I have been building bridges. We’ve talked about things nobody else knows about. It’s meant the world to both of us. You can’t fake that.’ Gustav coughs and tries again. ‘Thanks to you, we’re closer than ever.’

‘And so will you and I be. See? What goes around comes around. It was only ever a matter of time. No one else matches up to me, and you know it!’ Margot puckers her lips ready to take a sip of red wine but pauses, waving the glass in front of her mouth. ‘Remember when we bought this dear little place? How we celebrated the purchase in front of this fire? You were my true love, taking me up the arse, as you put it in your charming English-gent way just now. Ooh, so rough and hard, just the way you always did. Just the way we liked it. I was on all fours for you, I was your dirty little bitch. Right where you’re standing!’

‘Don’t change the subject!’

Gustav clenches his jaw as I let out a stifled cry, but he can’t look at me. It’s as if by pinning her down with his glare he will find a way of shutting her up.

But she’s said enough already. It can’t be unsaid. We are all her puppets.

It’s all here, in a fragile nutshell. Their marriage. The damage Margot did when she made enemies of the two brothers. The chaos she’s caused and is still causing, whether or not Pierre has followed her lead. The ugly exchanges between the brothers, the stammered confessions, Gustav’s weary acceptance of his own guilt, his desperation to have his brother by his side again, Pierre taking matters into his own hands in Venice, his clumsy apology to me on the phone at the gallery, everyone trying to hold the fragile peace together. Even though it hasn’t gone according to her plan, it’s still blindingly clear.

Margot has stage-managed it all.

‘And see how cosy I made my little den since I took it over again?’ she goes on, sure of her captive audience now. ‘My special Manhattan collection of whips is still here. Your cute ass has been striped red by each and every one of them!’

My beautiful, clever, strong lover is locked in a staring match with this woman as if she’s one of those mythical creatures, a basilisk was it, that can kill you with one look.

I follow his gaze towards her glossy red mouth, the seam of red wine wet between the plump lips that don’t quite meet. They have that swollen look of collagen injections. That must be what’s different about her. As her throat jumps to swallow the wine, I can imagine those lips wrapped round Gustav’s hardness, sucking on him, swallowing his juices. Has he noticed the papery skin on her neck? The artful pussycat bow of the see-through blouse, tied to hide the slight droop under her chin? It’s probably wishful thinking on my part, but up close she looks like she might just disintegrate at any moment.

‘What about Polly?’ I whimper, trying to carry my voice across the room to get Gustav’s eyes off his ex-wife. ‘She and Pierre met by pure chance through work. Not even you could have organised that. Not even you could know we were cousins.’

‘Adoptive cousins, wasn’t it? Weren’t you the baby they found chucked in the mud?’ Margot keeps her eyes on Gustav. ‘Your connection with Polly was a delightful coincidence, it’s true. So marvellous when everything ticks like clockwork. Tick-tock, she led Pierre right to Gustav. Tick-tock, another woman rocked Pierre’s world and she was history. And tick-tock, she got all paranoid, did an even better job of breaking the two of you up than I did!’

Gustav doesn’t silence her horrible words. He doesn’t stop her gaze running slowly down his body, over his stomach in its aubergine cashmere sweater, over the belt of his jeans. He doesn’t stop his ex-wife licking her lips as she ogles the crotch of the man who once walked her up the aisle.

I dig my nails into the fabric of the brocade sofa, scratching for a thread to unravel. ‘Polly and I are like sisters!’

‘You weren’t thinking of your sister when you were cavorting with her boyfriend in Venice, though, were you?’ Margot runs her long pink tongue across her lips and stands up, but she moves towards Gustav, not me. ‘The heavens were smiling on my scheme, as they always do!’

Gustav shakes his head slowly. It’s as if she’s injected him with tranquilliser so that he can barely move, even when she steps closer.

‘Listen to yourself. My scheme. You’re the one who’s lying. Every word that comes out of your mouth—’

‘Turns you on. Don’t deny it. You’re getting hard now, seeing me again. I’m willing to bet your entire fortune, Gusty, that I could make you come, right here, right now, within seconds. I practised endlessly on your little brother. All I had to do was crook my finger. He was in my panties as soon as you could say “boner”. But it was only ever about you. Getting you to notice me again. Admit it. You’re horny as hell just hearing my voice, Gusty. You’re remembering how good we were together.’